Video: A speed tip for making basic adjustments

Now that we know quite a bit about these basic adjustment controls, I want to take a look at a few techniques that we can use in order to speed up our workflow when working with these controls. We will be using this photograph here, this is a portrait of my oldest daughter Annie, holding our youngest, when she was just one day old, and let's say that we need to correct this photograph. One of the things that we know that we can do is we can hover over the slider and click-and-drag. You can also position your cursor over the name of the slider, and then as you click-and-drag, you'll have a little bit more precision.

This course provides in-depth training on Camera Raw 7, the Photoshop CS6 component that enables photographers to open and manipulate raw format images. Raw images are minimally processed in the camera; they're effectively the exact data recorded by the camera's sensor. Author Chris Orwig shows you how to control a raw image's appearance—exposure, shadow and highlight detail, color balance, and sharpness—with far more precision than is possible with JPEG images. The course also introduces the new workflow procedures and technical concepts and issues associated with raw content, so that photographers can best leverage this powerful format.

A speed tip for making basic adjustments

Now that we know quite a bit about these basic adjustment controls, I want to take a look at a few techniques that we can use in order to speed up ourworkflow when working with these controls.We will be using this photograph here, this is a portrait of my oldest daughterAnnie, holding our youngest, when she was just one day old, and let's say thatwe need to correct this photograph.One of the things that we know that we can do is we can hover over theslider and click-and-drag.You can also position your cursor over the name of the slider, and then as youclick-and-drag, you'll have a little bit more precision.

You can change how quickly the slider moves in this mode by holding down a few Modifier keys.If you hold down the Shift key and drag, you can see, you can make some reallydrastic and quick adjustments.On the other hand, if you hold down Cmd on a Mac or Ctrl on Windows and drag, it will be a little bit more incremental.It will make smaller adjustments.Another way that you can quickly work through these different adjustments is by pressing the Tab key and then by using the Arrow keys to change the amounts.For example, here I'm going to press Tab,that will then move this to the Contrast field.

Next, I'll press the Down Arrow button and that's then decreasing the overall Contrast.I will press Tab again to go to the Highlights and then tap the Down Arrow key to decrease the value of those Highlights so I can bring some more detailback into that area.Press Tab once more and now I will press the Up Arrow key.Now, why would we want to use this technique?Well, this can actually be helpful if you're flying on a plane and you haveyour laptop computer, it's kind of tricky to use that track pad to make the precise adjustments.

Other times, maybe what you want to do is you just work on an area of yourimage and then you want to just subtly change it, well, once you've used that slider, you can then just use those arrow keys to move up or down or to change the values there.We can press Tab to cycle forward through all of these different adjustments.You can see how that's moving here.It will then go back to the top and then make its way back down.Another way that we can use this shortcut is if we just want to move backwardsrather than forwards, well, just add the Shift key to that shortcut, that'sShift+Tab, that moves backwards through these different settings, Tab moves forwards, and then again, you also will want to write down in your notes that you can use those Up and Down Arrow keys, so that you can then change the amounts of those various controls.

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